Efficient Security Algorithm for Power-Constrained IoT Devices

Abstract

Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices characterized by low power and low processing capabilities do not exactly fit into the provision of existing security techniques due to their constrained nature. Classical security algorithms that are built on complex cryptographic functions often require a level of processing that low-power IoT devices are incapable to effectively achieve due to limited power and processing resources. Consequently, the option for constrained IoT devices lies in either developing new security schemes or modifying existing ones to be more suitable for constrained IoT devices. In this work, an efficient security algorithm for constrained IoT devices, based on the advanced encryption standard, is proposed. We present a cryptanalytic overview of the consequence of complexity reduction together with a supporting mathematical justification, and provisioned a secure element (ATECC608A) as a tradeoff. The ATECC608A doubles for authentication and guarding against implementation attacks on the associated IoT device (ARM Cortex M4 micro-processor) in line with our analysis. The software implementation of the efficient algorithm for constrained IoT devices shows up to 35% reduction in the time it takes to complete the encryption of a single block (16 B) of plain text, in comparison to the currently used standard AES-128 algorithm, and in comparison to current results in literature at 26.6%.